Daddy said sometimes he thought it was Satan’s doing that I loved nice things the way I did, because who’d I ever get that from? I had no real answer to that one. Seemed like I was born with that love like I was born with black hair and brown eyes: Seemed like a part of me missing, the way a body’d miss one of its arms.
Truth is I probably got it from the von Hennigs themselves, being up there like I was when I was little, tagging after Mum from room to room in that place. You could have set our whole house down in their dining room/kitchen/pantry and have room for a Ping-Pong table besides.
It was up to their place I got my first glimpse of Bud Pegler and her, up to their place I got to know him some. I wrote down word for word one thing Bud Pegler said to me, leaning down to say it with the grin on his face and his eyes staring into mine, his mouth so close to mine I felt his warm breath on my lips.
“Opal, you’ve got real pretty eyes, and someday—”
I never liked V. Chicken, even though she never personally did anything to me. She even sent down some of her clothes for me to wear. I never wanted to go up and thank her for them, so Mum made me write her thank-you notes instead. I’d complain and complain, and Daddy said to call her on the telephone if writing notes was so hard. I’d say, “I wouldn’t call her up if you paid me.”
“Well, no good deed goes unpunished,” Daddy’d say. “Girl sends some pretty things down to you and winds up on your hate list.”
“I don’t have no hate list.”
“Don’t sound like you like her, Opal, and I hope the reason’s not envy.”
Deep down I couldn’t cross off envy as the reason, but I wasn’t telling him that. Told him I didn’t have a reason, sometimes you just don’t take to someone, but I knew as well as I knew how to spell Satan I sometimes hated being a have-not. I’d have been a real good have, and not taken none of it for granted the way V. Chicken did. I didn’t think she thought twice about being a have, and I know personally from looking in her closets there was clothes on hangers with the price tags still on them, just never got around to wearing them.
V. Chicken was her beautiful self that May morning standing out in front of The Hand. Times I was up there working, I didn’t run into her too much—seemed like she was always out. She smiled at me like we was friends or something, with this mouth of straight white teeth, wearing clothes I’d wear to clean house in, but on her it didn’t matter. She had blond hair like an angel (never saw one with black hair, which was something to think about), green eyes like emeralds, all these freckles.
Said she, “Well, hi there, Opal! I’ve come to the healing.”
“I thought maybe you was on your way to the dump,” I said, “except you all don’t go to the dump yourselves.”
She laughed like I was some TV comedian and said, “I brought a friend with me. He’s parking the car.”
Daddy and Mum and Bobby John were loading dishes and stuff from lunch into the van.
Mum called out, “That you, Sally?”
“It’s me, Arnelle. I’ve come to the healing.”
“Well praise the Lord and welcome!” Mum said.
“I got inspired by Doctor Pegler this morning, I guess.”
Daddy said, “He’s a fine man, praise the Lord,” which was not the same thing Daddy said in the house, times he’d seen Guy Pegler on the TV. Then Daddy always said, “Can’t beat that. Can’t beat that,” meaning he was into worrying again about people thinking they could go to church right in their own living room, instead of down to some real church.
Another thing that worried Daddy was folks who went to The Hand sending in their money to the TV preachers, instead of dropping it into the plate. Our offerings were way down, and Daddy said inflation was only half the problem.
“It ain’t inflation,” Daddy’d say, “it’s infiltration. We are being slowly infiltrated by outsiders. They’re coming right into the living rooms on the TV.”
“Opal?” Mum said. “You better go on in and see if there’s folks needing help. Old Mrs. Bunch is here on a walker from her rheumatism.”
“Nice to see you, Opal,” said V. Chicken.
The wheels were already in motion. It was the start of things, but I didn’t know that. I only knew I didn’t like her being there, coming to sightsee at The Hand.
You could fill all the oceans in the world with what you don’t know about your own beginnings and endings. In the movies music starts tinkling, telling you something’s coming, telling you the mood is swinging you another way, warning you, preparing you, but in real life it just all comes down on you like an avalanche.
It’d been a year since we’d had a healing. Last time the healer was a short, tubby preacher from Newark, Ohio, who took sixty percent of the collection, that was his deal. We didn’t make a hundred dollars because Daddy said he had all the charm and power of Bobby John. Daddy said he was just about as colorful as a sack of flour, and couldn’t heal a cold sore in three weeks’ time.
This Sunday we had K. Christian Keck from out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He went fifty-fifty on the collection, had hair as red as the fires of hell, and was a crowd drawer so cars were parked as far back as the sign that said City Dump.
When I was little, I’d worry over who’d be healed and what if nobody was, but Daddy taught me there were very few miracles
